Axios

The aftermath of Cyclone Idai in southern Africa has left hundreds of homes and buildings with serious structural devastation and flooded streets. DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 satellite collected imagery on Friday of Beira, Mozambique, reveals the extent of the destruction.

Details: This weekend, charity confederation Oxfam intends to start distributing aid, including water purification tabs and hygiene kits, as hundreds of thousands of survivors in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe run the risk of waterborne illness including cholera and diarrhea. Teams with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) are also responding to the damage with medical supplies, water and sanitation support.

Images were released this week of a "fireball" that exploded nearly 16 miles over the Bering Sea on Dec. 18, 2018, captured by 2 powerful NASA instruments aboard the Terra Satellite.

Details: The fireball — indeed, the scientific name of these radiant meteors — released an estimated 173 kilotons of energy — roughly 10 times the energy of an atomic bomb, however given its altitude and remote destination, posed no peril on Earth. This was the strongest meteor observed from Earth since 2013.

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency admitted on Friday to a data "incident" involving the personal and banking information of 2.5 million U.S. disaster survivors who used FEMA's Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, the Washington Post reports.

Details: Those effected survived natural disasters including hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. The release of the information could result in identity theft and fraud, according to a watchdog report dated March 15. FEMA Press Secretary Lizzie Litzow explained in a statement that the security blunder was the result of FEMA "oversharing" "unnecessary" amounts of personal details during the process of transferring disaster survivor information to a contractor. Litzow also said the government agency is taking "aggressive measures to correct this error," per the Post.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to say the release of information was not a "breach."

In just the past 12 months, Nebraska floods, Carolina and Florida hurricanes and California wildfires have put military installations in peril, ravaging buildings and doing billions in damage.

The big picture: The national security consequences of climate change, mainly through extreme weather events, are here and now, Axios Science editor Andrew Freedman emails.

The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, announced her run for governor of Puerto Rico, AP reports.

The big picture: She is challenging Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who is seeking a second term. Cruz became well-known as a critic of President Trump after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017.

Two ferocious cyclones are taking aim at Australia this weekend, with the possibility that both could make landfall as Category 4 or greater storms within 24 hours of each other. If that happens, it would mark only the second time in the country's history that such a weather event has occurred.

Why it matters: Cyclone Trevor, in the Gulf of Carpenteria, and Cyclone Veronica, off Western Australia, are each intensifying while moving slowly toward land. These storms threaten to bring storm surge flooding to the coast, damaging winds and excessive inland rainfall. Of the two, Cyclone Veronica appears poised to hit a more populated part of the country, potentially coming ashore on March 24 near Port Hedland in Western Australia. That city of about 16,000 could be inundated by a powerful storm surge as the storm barrels slowly inland.

Weather-related natural disasters are on the rise, and AVs could become powerful tools for activating response systems and for collecting and sharing data, news and warnings.

Why it matters: Connected AVs could contribute to new emergency response networks by disseminating critical information, routing people away from disasters and possibly even dispatching emergency AVs on optimized routes.

America's farmers are living through the worst economic crisis in almost 30 years, driven by low commodity prices, trade war pressures and record flooding.

Why it matters: What's ravaging U.S. farms are part of a trend that's upending economies and regions around the world. That may make this heartland downturn different from the ones before it. As NYT columnist Paul Krugman writes, rural America is being "undermined by powerful economic forces that nobody knows how to stop."